Hold out your goodie bags, Atlantic Software has another free email template for you.

On this premium Halloween card, write a couple of quick lines to say “Thank you” to your customers.   Or you can offer a Halloween promotion and watch the holiday sales roll in.

This Halloween card is short, sweet, and simple. Kind of like a Tootsie Roll.

Download your free Halloween email marketing template

To use your free Halloween card in Email Marketing Pro, follow these simple steps:

1) After downloading your template, save it and unzip it to your desktop or some other folder where you can find it
2) In Email Marketing Pro click Import Template under the campaigns tab
3) In the “Import a Template” window, click Open Template
4)  Browse to the file “index.html” in the template folder and open it.
5) The template opens in the “Import A Template” window. Give the template a name.
6) Click Save Template. The template will now be available in the Campaign Wizard.

The screenshot below shows importing the template into the template editor.

During the holidays, customers get a lot of email and are bombarded with ads that compete for their attention. In addition, you’ll be competing with their time with family and friends.

During the holiday season, carve out your place in the market. Create an eye-catching and compelling reason for your customer to open your email, view your Facebook post or Tweet, and buy your product.

1. Think Benefits

It’s tempting to write a quick subject line that says “50% off Gifts” because it requires little thought and seems enticing. However, studies conducted at email marketing firms indicate that these subject lines are not effective because the recipients see them all the time.

A better way to stand out is to write subject lines that focus in on the benefits you are offering to the customer. For example, a subject line such as “A Generous Offer from My Company” will entice the reader to want to view what the offer is.

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. What does she want around the holidays? How about “10 Ways to Make The Holidays Special.” Or,  ”Top 5 Last Minute Gift Ideas.”

2. Facebook Fun

A recent study by  Web Liquid found that you are 10% more likely to engage readers if you post to Facebook with an image. Also, if you have a call to action to “Like” a post, then you are 27% more likely to receive Likes.

Over the holiday season, your customers are likely to be on Facebook to chat with friends and family. Make sure to maintain fresh and interesting content during this time, and include great pictures and calls to action. This may also be a good time to focus on your relationship with your customer by sending a “social media email,” asking them to join you on Facebook.

And why not have some fun? A survey on Facebook  may be a simple way to bring your fans to your page. For example, you might ask “What do you love the most about the holidays?” Or, you could offer a Christmas game or coloring pages for the children.

3. Tweet Well

Twitter will be a hotspot over the holidays for people enjoying their down time. How can you stand out amongst the crowd? One way is to find good quality content that will be of benefit to your followers and post it.

Ask yourself, what value can I add to others during the holidays?  Can I make someone smile? Wish them well? Help them learn something new. A lesser used, but highly effective means of improving relations is to engage others. Has someone Tweeted something that you can offer more insight on, that you can thank them for? Reply and Retweet.

4. Send Cards

If you are a small business, then you have probably given thought to how you can compete with larger companies who take the majority of market share. More and more, customers are choosing small businesses because of their superior customer care. Even if your annual revenue does not depend greatly on the holiday flux, this is still a good time to thank your customers and wish them well. Any time you take to associate your business with good customer care is time well spent.

5. Decorate Your Pumpkin

This is the ideal time to remember the importance of good design. Incorporate a holiday section on your website to engage your visitors. Use professional templates in your emails to highlight the significance of your holiday message. Remember, your ability to sell depends on 70% the target list, 20% the offering, and 10% the design. Don’t overlook the importance of being professional and seasonal.

Of the hundreds of email marketing messages sitting in my inbox last Christmas,  one that definitely got opened was a marketing email from Neflix.  If you’re a Netflix customer, you may have seen it. The subject line reads, “Have an extra DVD rental on us this holiday.”

The subject line stood out, I think, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that it presented a concise call to action. The strong verb “have” led me to believe, correctly, that if I were to open the email, that I would end up having something of benefit to me. And, it did its job well of creating in me the desire to act: in this case, to open the email.

I began to wonder if the call to action was a common tactic in email subject lines, and have found in my informal way that it is, in fact, not a comonly used tactic. Most marketers try to make me open their emails by using catchy, cute, or gimmicky subject lines that fail to make me want to act upon anything. Some examples in my inbox are: “Your next vacaction starts today.”  Really, I think, I’m not even packed and certainly haven’t planned to go anywhere anytime soon, much less today. Another: “spend the day brainstorming with me.” No, thanks, that sounds like work and I don’t have time. “Be the first to know about our latest promos and freebies,” reads another. Oh, you expect me to believe that I’ll be the first person to know? Doesn’t inspire me to open the email.

Once I opened the offer from Netflix, I found a simple, short, well-designed coupon with an obvious and easy-to follow call to action. The overall result: I get a free DVD. Netflix retains a loyal customer who certainly will not unsubscribe from their mailing list, if I can get something out of it.

Your marketing email clears a major hurdle when someone opens it.

You’ve managed to write a compelling enough subject line for the recipient to click and read. Volumes of information exist about writing good subject lines. But, very few articles exist about creating effective opening lines.

After a reader opens your email, comes the moment of truth. Will you be able to hold the interest of the reader enough to close a sale or build awareness of your product?

Get Attention!

Once the recipient opens the email, what next?

 Is your intention to educate the recipient about your business or product? To make a sale? Regardless of the purpose of the email, one thing is clear: you have to grab the reader’s attention with a strong and relevant opening line.

By relevant, I mean timely and you-oriented. The best email opening lines grab the reader’s attention by focusing on the needs, wants, and concerns of the recipient and contain timely information.

For example, maybe your target market consists of small businesses looking to get better search engine results from your SEO company. Your opening statement might appeal to the reader, in a timely and attention grabbing way. For example,

“Great news!  Based on your recent interest in getting more web traffic from visitors located in Richmond, VA, I’ve found the perfect solution.”

Here are a few tips for creating powerful, attention-getting opening lines.

1) Be you-oriented and positive

Don’t start with a statement describing yourself or your company. Classic mistake. The recipient wants to know how the email will be of value to them. Therefore, keep the content focused on the reader, and be positive. Starting with “Good news!” or “Congratulations!” is a great way to instantly create a positive feeling.

2) Be timely

After all, we’re talking about an email inbox. Does the information appeal to the reader in a timely way? For example, are you emailing them about a sale that ends soon? Are you emailing information about a product that’s new and exciting? Ask yourself, how is this email, and this opening statement, presenting timely information?

3) Consider asking a question

If you have no better way to open a marketing email, ask a compelling question. For example: “Did you know that businesses are losing an average 10 sales per day — hundered of dollars —  by having a poorly designed, outdated website?

4) Be direct and to-the-point

Let’s be honest. People refuse to have their time wasted in today’s now, now, now digital age. They want to know –quickly — how the information is relevant to them and their lives. Avoid long sentences or skirting around the issue. Just be direct and to-the-point. For example, “This email — every word of it — is about how your company can make more money and stop losing sales.”

5) Build Rapport

A you-attitude approach that creates a sense of rapport between you and the reader is an effective way to gain and keep interest in the email body. For example, “Like me, you want an effective, cost effective approach to advertising your product or service.”

Conclusion

These are just 5 possibilities for gaining the attention of the recipient. The important point to remember is that you have just one or two seconds to appeal to the recipient, so find a way to get attention and stay focused on the recipient. Once you do that, you’re on your way to the next steps: building interest, conviction, desire, and closing a sale.

-Douglas
Atlantic Software

When times are tough, marketing budgets get cut.

But there are a number of extremely powerful ways to market your business for free. Think of economic downtimes as an opportunity to invest time in free marketing.

It’s important for any business never to overlook the power of using the internet to generate free marketing.

Efforts you put towards free marketing can:

• help establish your online presence and have more staying-power than banner or PPC ads
• establish your expertise in your field
• create long-lasting relationships with others
• generate additional forms of revenue
• sitr your creative juices

In this article I’ll go over 6 ways to market your business for free (or almost free).

Fusion Marketing

In tough times, other businesses are looking for creative ways to market as well. Work together with businesses that have a similar target market as yours, but aren’t direct competitors.

Approach the owner of another business and ask if they would be interested in exchanging flyers, banners, trading leads and traffic. Offer to feature the business in your blog or newsletter if they’ll do the same in return. You’ll generate business for each other, and it costs nothing to approach another business owner with this prospect.

Thinking Locally

It never hurts to put up a flyer or leave business cards at your favorite coffee shop. Nor does it hurt to pick up the phone and cold call other businesses in the area who will be interested in supporting another local business or in your ideas about fusion marketing.

Submitting Articles, Blog Writing, and Writing A Book

Establish your expertise in your field, so that future internet searches will drive traffic to your website. Obviously, you created your business or website because you are an expert at something. So, why not provide value to someone’s life by writing an article or book about the subject?

Ezine Articles at http://ezinearticles.com/ is an extremely popular place to submit articles in your field of expertise. Make sure that, in the footer of your article, you include an “author biography” with a link to your website.

And who knows, maybe you can create a book out of your articles, and the book you write will eventually generate another revenue stream?

Try using the free Google keyword tool to get ideas for new articles. The Google Keyword Tool lists common keyword searches done by Internet users, as well as how many times that search is performed per month. You may get some ideas for articles based on the keyword searches entered by Internet users. Titling your article after the keyword search will increase the likelihood of your article or blog getting traffic from search engines.

Posting Comments On Blogs and Creating Link Bait

Posting comments on blogs provides a free link to your website. It can also be a way to establish your expertise in your field. Have you ever read a blog comment from someone and thought, “This person seems like they really know what they’re talking about. I wonder if they could help me with …”

Just be careful not to automate the process of posting blog comments, because search engines will penalize you for it, and blog owners do not like spam. The key is to post to 1-5 blogs per day, in a subject related to your business and do it in a natural, organic way. Over time, the number of links to your website will grow and increase your ranking in search engine results.

In addition, links from blogs are great ways to get “link juice” to your site. “Link juice,” is a term for the power of having other websites link to your website.  Why is it important to have links to your website? Search engines like Google will actually increase the position of your website in their search engine results, based on the number of links pointing to your website.

“Link Bait” is another way to get links to your website. Link bait is a term for something on your website that entices other website owners or bloggers to link to it. This could be a simple application, game, puzzle, drawing, cartoon, or anything else that people enjoy linking to. A friend of mine once had an applicaltion created in Adobe Flash that automatically takes any digital image and creates a puzzle out of it. Thousands of game-related websites linked to his website, thus increasing his online popularity and search engine ranking.

Another way to get links to your site is to provide the HTML code to link to your website to Internet users, in return for doing something. For example, you could give away a free eBook or other product in return for a link to your site.

Issuing Online Press Releases

Is your business doing something for the community, like sponsoring a food drive? Or, do you have an innovative product or offering that you think is newsworthy? Create a press release and send it to the editor of your local paper, as well as using online (free) press release submission services. Editors and journalists read press releases all the time, and get most of their story ideas from them.

PRLog is a company that offers a free press-release distribution service that will distribute your press release to search engines and industry litings at: http://www.prlog.org/submit-free-press-release.html

Writing a letter to your editor can also be a free and powerful way to generate awareness of your business. Position yourself as an expert in your field, and express your opinion. A letter to the editor is much more likely to get published than a press release.

Social Networking

 If you haven’t yet created a Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter page, then now’s the time. These are all free ways to generate awareness of your brand and increase traffic to your website.

Search engines are giving more weight than ever before to social interaction with your website. In fact, the Internet has become almost entirely a socially-driven platform. For example, Bing is now integrated with Facebook, and search engine results sometimes show which of your friends on Facebook like a certain link. These are extremely powerful ways to increase the likelihood of someone clicking on your site in search engine results.

Needless to say, having people like your Facebook or Google+ page establishes your expertise in social circles. And just as important, it’s an excellent way to market new products to exisiting customers or encourage existing customers to share your content with their friends.

Why not start an email marketing campaign with Email Marketing Pro today to encourage your subscribers to like you on Facebook?

Conclusion

Dedicate some time each day towards free ways to market, and you’ll be miles ahead of your competitor in the long run. The relationships you create with other businesses, websites, and blogs will have real staying power in the online and offline community.

What is the purpose of your marketing?

While this question may seem to have an obvious answer, have you ever really sat down and created simple goals to guide your marketing efforts?

Setting Overall Goals

Having clarity and purpose in marketing will increase your chances of goal completion and have the overall effect of improving your email marketing efforts.

Some examples of clearly defined goals of your overall marketing efforts are:

• to increase sales from potential customers
• to increase repeat sales from existing customers
• to stimulate awareness of the product in the small business community

Your goals are the building blocks of your marketing strategy and should be the very first part of that strategy. If  you do not have overall marketing goals for your business, then how will you be able to formulate an email marketing strategy?

Do this: Sit down now and think of the goals you want to accomplish through marketing and make your vision of what you want to accomplish crystal clear. After all, how will you know you’ve arrived at your destination unless you know what the destination is?

Setting Specific Goals and Having a Call To Action

After developing overall goals for your marketing in general, now try setting a goal for each and every email marketing campaign you send.

For example, if you’re sending an email campaign to advertise a new product to current customers, go ahead and set a goal like: “From this email, I want 200 customers of my 10,000 current customers to purchase this new product.”

Notice this goal is a little beyond what we may expect from an email campaign. Statistically 1-2% of your email campaign will generate a sale. 

Now, think, how will I reach that goal? By setting the goal a little ahead of the expected, you’ll be forced to stretch yourself and your imagination.

Thinking in this way will guide your process of creating marketing emails and ensure they deliver the results you want. Setting goals for each email campaign will also ensure that the campaign will support your overall goals and business mission.

The tantamount question is: What specific action do you want your recipient to take as a result of your marketing effort?

Some examples of specific actions you want your recipient to take are: 1) send for information 2) call you 3) visit your webiste 4) place an order 5) learn more about your product.

The point is, do not ask your recipients to do something, give them additional options, or depend on chance that the recipient will know what to do with your marketing email. Tell them to do something.

For new subscribers, your goal may be oriented towards familiarizing the subscriber with your brand or proving yourself as a trusted source of information in your field.  Even still, providing a concise call to action at the end of your marketing email will ensure that you will be able to meet the goal of the campaign.

If your emails do not have a specific goal in mind, if they do not provide a call to action, if they do not cause the customer to do something…then really, what’s the point?

Did you know:

• 8 out of 10 business professionals check their email as their first task every day
• 67% of those check their email 6 times a day
• Email Marketing earns on average $43 for every $1 invested
• Email Marketing is the most cost-effective approach to building brand awareness and customer loyalty

These are promising statistics, but to take full advantage of the rewards of email marketing requires a certain mindset.

There are two keys to developing the right email marketing mindset, and ultimately the right strategy. 

The keys are:  1) persistence and 2) a giving spirit

Persistence

Statistics show that the average consumer must be exposed to your brand or offering 6 – 7 times before trusting you enough to make a purchase. It’s all part of the decision-making process that goes into buying anything.

Always keep this statistic in mind as you launch your email campaigns. Rewards may not be instantly noticeable, but the statistics show that persistence pays.

Email Marketing is a brilliant and low-cost way to accomplish the goal of exposing the customer to your business the needed 6 – 7 times.

The temptation is to think of email marketing as synonymous with advertising. For most small businesses, this is the wrong mindset. Large companies such as Target, WalMart, and Groupon can get away with sending only advertisements because these are well-established brands and that is what the recipient expects to receive from them .

But if you have a not-so-well-known brand, only 20% of your emails should take an advertising approach.

The other 80% should be dedicated to establishing your presence in the recipient’s mind as a trusted expert, source of information, entertainment, or something else of value to the recipient.

Give your recipients food for thought, a link to your website, and over a period of time, they will visit your site enough and be exposed to your brand enough to be willing to make purchases.

A Giving Spirit

Be patient with your recipients and undertstanding of the fact that it will take them some time after signing up for your newsletter to trust you enough to make a purchase.

Give them something of value on a weekly or monthly basis. This can be expert advice, giveaways, or news about updates to your website.

A recipient who trusts your expertise and receives value from your emails will give you trust and value in return.

So, start developing an email marketing strategy today, and ask yourself, what’s something of value I can give my recipients for free that will earn their trust and respect for my business?